Thursday, April 06, 2006

Mr. Fruit Bunny

Check out Mr. Fruit Bunny! I discovered his cuteness in the latest issue of Taste of Home, and was immediately struck by what a great, healthy, vegan-friendly idea this was for Easter. The creator says, "I’ve taken it to school functions and gotten rave reviews from the youngsters." What I want to know is, how does she manage to transport Mr. Bunny so he arrives in one piece? I would probably make this fresh on location instead.

28 comments:

You are a lifesaver!! This is exactly the thing to send to school for my son's spring break party. I hate sending junk food or candy, but was asked to send something 'spring themed.' I'd never seen anything like Mr. Fruit Bunny before! You rock...as usual. :) Thank you!

I'm a life long vegetarian and always looking for entertaining eating for my kids. I love your site..I just wanted to point out that marischino cherries traditionally use the colorant Red 7 which is made from the shell of some sort of beetle (http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/fr060130.html). Just in case poeple were thinking that Mr Bunny Fruit was vegan. Thanks for all your suggestions.

Jennifer - Here's a campaign I hope you're aware of - the "Make Mine Chocolate" campaign put on by the House Rabbit Society. This is a great way of promoting kindness to animals, in keeping with the Vegan mindset. And, as someone who's rescued a few rabbits and who's heard horror (and I do mean horror) stories of so many more... it's well worth a plug.

Actually, there's no worries from Red 7- it doesn't come from beetles, it's a byproduct of coal. I found this out on a Kosher website and some other links- bugs aren't kosher, so it's a concern for that as well!

Rather than seeing my response as a negative, just view it as education for anyone who didn't know that MOST commercial made marischino cherries use a non-vegan colorant. This is a site to share information not gross generalizations.

I love the fruit bunny! That really is perfect to take into a class party. The kids would love it! Every year I ask parents to bring fruit, cut-up veggies, etc to the class parties, but the kids don't usually touch it with all of the other junk around... this would get them interested! :)

I've been seeing a lot of "vegans are so such-and-such" or "are all vegans so such-and-such?" these days on the blog comments. I don't know where it's coming from, but I agree-- the negative comments are weird. I'm not really sure what's prompting them!

Instead of licorice, you could do long thin slices of all-natural vegan fruit leather (I hate that term, but that's what it's called...)/fruit rolls. Or you could use those thin pretzel sticks for the whiskers and break a piece of the thin large regular style pretzels for the mouth. You could also cut vegan chocolate into these pieces as well. I know this is to stay away from candy, but a little bit is okay for those who can have it. There are other ideas too. Free yourself to use your imagination.

Oh, dear. There have been some negative comments. Two were deleted. Hmmm. You know what? Get over it. Vegans are VERY interested in NOT ever using animal products of any kind. That's not a negative thing. I'm not vegan, I'm ovo-lacto veg, but I have to respect the kind of committment that veganism requires. So the nit picky what ingredients are in this sort of thing isn't a negative comment. It's necessary. So they don't violate their own morals. I admire that. I aspire to that.

And the cherries I used turned out to be not vegan. Poop. I'll look for vegan marashino cherries next time, for sure.

One of the reasons I love this site is that I can get great ideas for food that doesn't harm anyone, people, animal, or insect.